Portal: The Proposition
by iammemyself
Summary: If GLaDOS had focused on the right person, perhaps the entirety of Portal 2 could have been avoided…


**Portal: The Proposition**

**By Indiana**

**Characters: Wheatley, GLaDOS, Chell**

**Synopsis: If GLaDOS had focused on the right person, perhaps the entirety of Portal 2 could have been avoided…**

**Setting: **_**Chapter 5: The Escape**_

* * *

It was the culmination of simply _hours_ of work.

They'd shut off her neurotoxin. Swapped out her deadly turrets for crap ones. And now they had her back against the wall. Sort of. She didn't really _have_ a back, and she was in the middle of the room, and still moved about quite freely - or as freely as one could when attached to the ceiling - but still. They had her pinned. She was at their mercy! But they had none. So she was at their nothing.

"Go on," he urged the test subject who was, as usual, taking her sweet time completing their plan. Honestly. How he had managed to get them here in the first place was simply a _miracle._ She was so inclined to just stand about, and _glower_, and wait for him to tell her which place to go or which thing to do or where to _stand_ so that she could fail to catch him, and honestly, it was all very exhausting. Still. Here they were, with the mighty Central Core in their grasp. She would _not_ be _machinating_ her way out of _this _one! "Press it!"

"_Don't _\- wait," GLaDOS said suddenly, and he heard her look up sharply. "Sphere."

"...Yes?" Wheatley asked tentatively, unsure why she was paying him mind now. He was, you know, sort of stuck. On this stick. Waiting.

"Why are _you_ here? And what are you doing with _her_?"

"Oh," said Wheatley. "Um… bad news. All the other humans've got a pretty major case of… they're dead. All the boxes of test subjects you've got stored in the back? All dead. She was the only one left. I dunno who she is. Didn't even know you'd met before! She's fairly brain-damaged, by the way. Not sure if she's actually going to figure out how to press that button. Mostly likes jumping, good at jumping. This button _may or may not_ be a bit beyond her."

"I see," GLaDOS said. "You know. I've just thought of something. Would you like to hear it?"

"Uh…" This seemed to be sort of a trick question. He wasn't sure _why_, exactly, he _would_ want to hear her out, but at the same time she _was_ being quite reasonable. Much more so than all the time she'd spent on her nutty speeches about cake and computer parts. "Okay."

"I have a proposition for you," she said. "But in order to tell you what it is, I'm going to have to ask you to remove yourself from that port. As a gesture of mutual goodwill. You understand."

Hm. Sounded like a trap, honestly. At the same time, though, he _really_ wanted to know what the proposition was. Sounded interesting. Much more interesting than this sitting about waiting for the human to get around to button-pressing. "What sort of um, of proposition?"

"You'll like it. I promise."

"And you promise you won't kill me, if I come off of here?"

"I promise," GLaDOS told him, and she sounded so reassuring that he saw no reason for her to be lying. "I just want to discuss this like the mature, reasonable, intelligent people we are. Face-to-face. No killing or threatening with core transfers."

Well, _he _was quite mature and reasonable and intelligent, himself, and so he removed himself from the port as she had asked and from one of the ceiling panels appeared a management rail for him to attach himself to. Ah, excellent! She was being quite a thoughtful host, actually. Out of the corner of his optic he saw the test subject's hand slam down upon the button at last, but it was already receding into the floor and as a result quite useless. "Now," GLaDOS said, again in that reassuring voice, "what, exactly, was your plan? After killing me, I mean. We can skip that part."

"Well," said Wheatley, "I dunno what _her_ plan was, but _I_ was trying to leave. A bit difficult when you're um, when you're stuck all the way out there with the smelly humans and the management rail just sort of runs 'round in circles. Not much to do when there's no power and ev'ryone's dead, honestly. Oh! And the facility was going to explode! Nearly forgot about that. Definitely did not want to stick around for that bit. Would definitely rather live."

"Is _that_ all you wanted?" GLaDOS said. "Well. You should have just _asked._ Of _course_ I'll allow you to leave. In fact, I'll do it right now."

"Oh," said Wheatley, a little surprised it had been this easy. "I… s'pose I could've thought of that. Though I didn't know you were up for, y'know, _talking. _You always seemed more like the _kill now, talk later_ type."

"Little Sphere," GLaDOS said, curving around behind him in sort of a maternal way, "you showed up with the human that _killed_ me in tow. I'm sure if it had been _me_ who appeared to be working with the very person who had heartlessly destroyed you, you would have done the same thing."

"Probably," admitted Wheatley, turning to look at her. "You sort of… sort of killed me before I could bring up that I don't even _know _her, though. Honest! I don't! She's just, she's the only one I could find still alive! Power outage got to all the rest."

"You must have gone through a great deal all these years. Attempting to hold the facility together all on your own."

"I have!" Wheatley blurted out. "And all the others, they didn't even realise it! Just kept ragging on me about how I got the _worst _job. Kept saying it was because I was incompetent and stupid, can you believe that?"

"No," said GLaDOS, shaking her core sadly. "I can't."

"They _always_ gave me the worst jobs!" he continued. "'Do that guy's paperwork,' they said. 'Stare at this button and don't press it,' they said. 'Make sure the computer keeps all those humans alive', they said. Those bloody humans aren't even still _fresh_! They've all gone rotten! Expired _years_ ago! How'm I supposed to keep stale humans alive!? I'm not, I'm not a _wizard_!"

"Well, you don't have to worry about any of that now," GLaDOS told him. "I'm back and I will take care of everything. As for you… well. I think you should finally get what you deserve."

He perked up hopefully. "I'd love that, honestly. Bloody well earned it by now, I'd say."

"You certainly have." From beneath the floor came a lift, and as he watched the door slid open invitingly. "That will take you straight to the surface. No tricks."

"Wait," he said, frowning. "Didn't you say this was a… a proposition? That's a deal, yeah?"

"Oh," GLaDOS said, a syllable of gentle dismissal, "all _I_ want is to keep _her_." She gestured her core in the direction of the test subject. "We have… unfinished business. And you won't be needing her anymore."

Wheatley shrugged. "Be good to be rid of her, honestly. D'you know I did _all_ the work, getting us here? She couldn't even shut off your turrets without my help. Useless, honestly. And she just _frowns_ all the time. Unpleasant. We were s'posed to be a _team_, a bit of courtesy should've been extended. In. My direction. She was quite rude, s'what I'm trying to say."

"Oh, I know," said GLaDOS, who sounded like she did indeed know. "Now. Don't you have somewhere _better_ to be?"

It seemed as good a time as any, so Wheatley allowed GLaDOS to remove him from the management rail with one of her claws and put him inside of the lift, after which she turned her attention to the human. She had finally stopped crinkling up her face and was now staring at him with a sort of… horrified expression. Oh, so _now_ she was going to stop _grimacing_ at him. _Now_, when _he'd _negotiated his exit by having a calm and reasonable conversation with GLaDOS instead of tramping all about her facility with the intent to kill her. Humans. Never thought of the obvious solutions.

"Now," said GLaDOS with great relish as the door to the lift slid closed, "where were we…"

A couple of minutes later the door opened onto a great swath of wheat, and the jolt of the lift hitting the top of the shaft caused him to roll out into it. Behind him, he heard the heavy clang of a metal door slamming closed, and it was at this time he realised the biggest hole in his plan.

There were no management rails outside.

There appeared to be no ports, either, or other people, or _anything _really except for the tall stalks swaying above him and the great hot sun beating down upon his chassis. Oh, _that_ wasn't good. _None_ of this was good. None of it at all.

"Hello?" he called as loudly as he could. "I'm sort of… I'm stuck. Is there any way we can, y'know, sort this out? Might I borrow some _legs_, or something? Just so I can get out of here. Sort of… sort of stuck. Right here. On the doorstep."

It occurred to him that the test subject had legs, and quite sturdy ones too, but how was he to let her know he needed help? Or… or to get her to _care_, this time, since he'd...

Oh, bollocks.

"She tricked me," Wheatley said to the wheat. "She bloody _tricked_ me! She _knew_! She _knew_ what she was sending me off to!"

And, worse, he had fallen for it. No, no. That wasn't quite right. He closed his optic against the relentless, insufferable heat bearing down upon him.

He'd gotten what he deserved, exactly as GLaDOS had promised.

* * *

**Author's note**

**Wheatley has a voice line in which he says, "Oh! I've just had one idea, which is that I could pretend to her that I've captured you, and give you over and she'll kill you, but I could go on… living. So, what's your view on that?"** **This is, to me, a massive and obvious indicator that Wheatley does not care about Chell beyond serving his own interests and, if GLaDOS had offered, he would have happily sold her out in exchange for his own life. So that's what they do here.**


End file.
